


what lingers

by Cazaan (sailor_muffin)



Series: Concerning James Bond [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, James Bond Has Issues, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Violence, still not particularly nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-12-26 18:32:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18287888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sailor_muffin/pseuds/Cazaan
Summary: Sequel to 'what matters'Can be read as stand-aloneThings fall apart.





	what lingers

“I don't expect you not to make mistakes,”  
the old M had told him on his first day as Q, her piercing eyes drilling into him.  
“You will make them. And some of them will be big. People will die because of them. That is unavoidable. What I do expect of you is that you earn up to them and keep going. Don't waste time regretting the past. It will paralyse you. My agents are counting on you to keep them alive. This nation is counting on you. I am counting on you. Is that understood?”

He had nodded, hands sweaty and heart pounding, because, to his endless frustration, standing in front of authority figures still made him nervous. 

“Dismissed.”  
She was no longer looking at him, engrossed in whatever file she had on her desk.

Just as he was about to turn around, she called back to him.  
“Another thing.”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“There were plenty of older, more experienced candidates for this job. We choose you. Not just because you are brilliant. We want you to transform Q-Branch into a new force to be reckoned with. This won't happen without some drastic changes. And change tends to piss people off. Better be ready for that.”

“Understood.”

The look on her face told him she didn't really believe that.

 

 

Meeting the infamous Double-O-Seven, the man who had come back from the dead, went a lot better than he expected. Especially since, in a sudden case of jittering nerves, he had sat down next to him and started talking pretentious nonsense, an embarrassing leftover of his college years, being three years younger than all of his peers and desperately trying to be taken seriously. 

He hated that part of him. That frantic, needy part that was constantly looking for validation, for acceptance from everyone. From anyone.

'Please, like me.'

But somehow, the agent acting like an arrogant bastard, regurgitating the same old taunts Q had heard so many times before that they had become almost comforting, now, made it easier.  
For his part, Q was used to throwing thinly veiled insults and their banter came naturally, like a well-rehearsed script. 

He called him Q with a nod and a twitch of a smile and Q smiled back, feeling warm all over.

(Later, much much later, he will think back on their first meeting and wonder how much James had played him, even back then.)

 

 

Q didn't have much in his life outside of work.  
A small flat in the heart of London he had fallen in love with and that he would be paying off for the next seven years. Paprika and Olly, the two tabbies that greeted him whenever he would manage to drag himself home, winding around his feet with purrs and meows, demanding food and attention and love. A mother he didn't visit any more, not after last time. 

(Truth was, it was very easy to be Q, because there wasn't anything left of the person he had been before.)

Sometimes, when he was still agitated because of whatever happened at MI6, he would jerk off in the shower. More often than not, he would think of Bond.  
Mostly because it was easy, because he was so much his type it wasn't even funny. Attractive in a harshly masculine way, highly competent, a stubborn prick, overly-confident to the extreme. Additionally, Q had had the dubious pleasure of having to listen in during several of his trysts during missions, stuck in Bond's ear, hearing every moan and grunt. 

Yes, maybe it was wrong and creepy and kind of sad, replaying what he had heard in his mind while hastily rubbing one off before the water had a chance to turn cold. Then again, he just wanted to be able to sleep, dammit. And he always slept great after.

 

 

“What's that then?”  
Double-O-Seven leaned over his desk, peering with interest at what Q was working on.

“Nothing for you. Or anyone, right now.”  
He refused to look up from his magnifying glass, carefully keeping his hands steady. When Bond didn't make a move to leave, only leaning slightly closer, he sighed.  
“Something I can help you with, Double-O-Seven?”

“Cranky. This thing got you frustrated?”

Q stood up straight. His back hurt. His fingers were cramping. Bond was smiling his strange half-smirk, looking horrendously handsome in his suit and smelling like expensive aftershave.  
“There had been some miscalculations. It went off during testing. Nearly took my hands off.”

Lightning-quick, Bond reached over the table, snatching up his wrist and holding his hand up into the light. Frozen in shock, Q let him, watched him staring at his prize, turning it this way and that way before letting go, a wolfish grin on his face.  
“Well, that would have been a shame.”

Bond kept doing this, this strange mixture of flirting and threatening and Q knew better than to read anything in it. But there was still a part of him that felt ridiculously, stupidly, embarrassingly flattered.  
“Just... get out. Bother someone else for a change.”

He was already turning around when he caught Bond's expression in the small mirror perched on his desk. Just for a moment. A fraction of a second.  
He wasn't smiling. His face... wasn't doing anything. It was completely blank. There was nothing. Only his eyes, bright and blue, staring at him with such an intense look of rage that he felt like someone had thrown him into liquid nitrogen. 

Then, the look was gone and Bond was smiling again, saying... something. Q had imagined this, probably. 

 

 

He should have been suspicious, having someone knock at his door at almost eleven pm. Especially when he looked through the door viewer and it was Ms Li from downstairs, someone he had barely spoken two words with, looking wide-eyed and frazzled.

He just removed the chain and opened his door like an idiot. There were three of them, just outside of range of the viewer, completely decked out, guns and black ski masks and everything. It would have been kind of hilarious, actually, if it wasn't so horrifyingly real and 'oh God, I'm going to die, I'm going to...'

They shoved their way inside, closing the door behind them, one of them holding on to Ms Li, the silencer pressed to her temple.

“Please don't shoot my cats.”

That got a bark of laughter from the apparent leader, who gestured to the third one.  
“Look around. And see if anyone else is here. Aside from the cats.”  
He had a slight accent, something vaguely Nordic. His eyes were a dark brown. Approximately five foot nine. Heavyset with broad shoulders. Relaxed pose. He had done this before. Many times.

Q heard rummaging behind him as his little flat was being searched. They wouldn't find anything here. He didn't take his work home. Nonsensically, he thought about how his laundry was drying in the bathroom and how he hadn't cleaned the litter box yet.  
“Would any of you gentlemen care for a cup of tea?”

“Polite little fucker, aren't ya?”  
The leader lifted his weapon, pointing right between Q's eyes, amusement coloring his voice.

“I try.”  
Deep breaths. Don't panic. He looked over to Ms. Li, deathly pale and silently shaking.

“Well, let's do this real politely, then.”

 

 

Everything was melting. His flesh was cooking, bubbling, falling off his bones in charred flakes. The pain was unbearable. The smell was even worse. Shapes and sounds flowed into each other. There was nothing holding the universe together, no difference between past or present, real or fake, memories or dreams. 

 

 

Bond got him out. Because of course he did.  
Q supposed he should feel grateful, but it was difficult to feel anything else except like absolute shit while in withdrawal. The combination they had pumped inside him was 'pretty epic', as one particularly obnoxious woman from toxicology had put it. His entire body was constantly cramping up painfully, he couldn't keep anything down, couldn't sleep, couldn't do anything but curl up and cry and sweat and dry heave.

(Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he heard Bond's voice: “Such a mess.”)

 

 

As it turned out, change really pisses some people off. Especially those that had been steadily feeding information to various criminal organisations and whose actions were on the cusp of being found out because of the shiny new security system Q had developed.

How is it that the biggest enemies of MI6 were always hiding in their own ranks?  
Just how shitty were their psychological profiles?

 

 

They wanted to know what questions he had been asked. What he told them.  
Q spent the next hour fighting down a panic attack. He didn't remember anything except being trapped in an endless circle of pain and horror.  
The last clear moment he had was standing in his flat, looking at Ms Li's terrified expression. 

(They had found her there, face-down, a bullet in her head. Q had looked at the pictures. The puddle of blood she had lain in had little paw prints in it.)

 

 

He moved. The new flat had cameras and panic buttons and reinforced locks. He hated it.

 

 

He read Bond's report. According to what he knew, Q didn't tell them anything. The guys who took him were slightly over-eager with the drugs, making him pretty much incoherent. Now, they were all dead, their base blown up. He wanted to be relieved by that. That he didn't betray anyone. That these people exploded into bloody bits and will never be able to hurt anyone again. Instead, all he felt was a creeping feeling of dread, forever coming closer.

(At night, staring into the dark, listening to the soft purring of Paprika and Olly lying next to him, Bond's voice echoed in his head: “Such a mess. Such a mess.”)

 

 

“Some of my patients who had been through traumatic incidents find themselves going through their memories obsessively or even in part recreating their traumas in hope of gaining further understanding and re-establishing some sort of control in their lives.”

“This is different. I don't remember what happened. I can't get rid of this if I don't know what it is.”

“It is very likely you will never remember. The drugs and the extreme stress have done extensive amount of damage. Your mind is protecting you. You have to stop fighting against it.”

“So you are suggesting I should just repress. How very psychologically healthy.”

“There is no one way to deal with situations like this. Right now, you have to give yourself time.”

Q left the office of Dr. Russell with a disgusted scowl on his face. He needed to know. He just needed to know and then... something would happen. Maybe then he could finally sleep again.

(“Such a...”)

 

 

He thought of asking Bond, just because he had completely ran out of ideas. He had been there. Maybe he knew something, anything. But whenever he considered it, something clammed up inside, hot panic flooding his body and he had to sit down, just to keep breathing.

(“...mess.”)

 

 

He remembered the feeling of something like a swarm of insects, crawling under his skin, burrowing deeper and deeper, no matter how much he tried to gauche them out.

He remembered being dead, being alive, being dead, being deadalivedeadalivedeadalive...

He remembered hearing the voice of his mother, screaming and cursing at him, for hours and hours on end.

He remembered the taste of blood, of ash, of tears, of death.

He remembered gunshots and screams, soft and dull like underwater.

He remembered James Bond, kneeling over him, covered in blood and dirt, looking down at him with the same horrible blank look on his face. The same rage in his eyes. Bond, who was slowly pushing a needle into his arm, shaking his head, murmuring:  
“Such a mess.”

 

 

“Are you going to let me in?”  
Q stared at Bond's shoulder, not even bothering to pretend to meet his gaze. Maybe he should have brought a gun. Then again, what the hell good would that do against a Double-O Agent?

Bond, for his part, didn't seem too surprised to find his Quartermaster on his doorstep in the middle of the night.  
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”  
There was a slur in his voice. His breath smelled like alcohol. 

Well, shit.  
“No.”

His flat was a lot bigger than Q's. But maybe that was just because it was almost completely empty.  
Q could feel Bond staring after him, watching him look around.  
“You should leave.”

Q snorted at that, gesturing to the nearly empty bottle of scotch and the single glass on the kitchen table.  
“Why? Am I ruining your lovely evening of drinking alone?”

“Funny.”  
The agent got a new glass from the cupboard. Filled it with two fingers. Held it out to him.

He made sure his and Bond's hands didn't brush while he took it before he downed it in one shot. He couldn't help scrunching up his face after. He hated alcohol, the taste, the smell, the foggy feeling it left in his head. The liquid sat in his empty stomach like a punch in the gut.  
“You know what's really funny? You are. You are bloody hilarious, Bond.”

He didn't react at all to that, just looking at him, placidly, waiting. As if Q was the one who was in the wrong, who was acting strange, who had to explain himself. 

“I never considered us friends. Or even friendly. And I know you are a bastard, even by Double-O standards.”  
Maybe he should drink more. He should definitely drink more. Bond just nodded at that and, as if reading his thoughts, filled his glass again. The final drops fell out of the bottle and for a moment Q got distracted by that, the last drip-drip-drip. Drip. Nothing left. Empty.  
“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

The anger was a relief. Ever since the incident he had been terrified and frustrated and confused and desperate and panicked and tired, so very tired, but this sudden burst of righteous energy, of howling, boiling, satisfying rage was so very freeing it was almost orgasmic.  
He threw the glass against the wall, liquid splashing and shards splattering all over the floor.  
“FUCK YOU! YOU THINK I WANT TO BE HERE?!”

Q hadn't missed the way Bond had winced, the way his hand had twitched, itching to grab for a weapon he wasn't carrying. He should have started throwing things right away. At least that got a reaction out of the agent, however small.  
“Talk to your psychiatrist, then.”

“Tell me why! Tell me why you did it!”

“I found you. You were drugged out of your mind. I got you out. End of story.”

A strange sound came out of Q's mouth, almost a sob, almost a laugh.  
The anger was gone. Now he was just tired again.  
“End of story,” he repeated hollowly.

He heard Bond sigh, heard him say: “Come on. Let's sit you down.”  
Luckily, he didn't touch him, just waved in the direction of what was probably supposed to be the living room, judging by the white leather couch among the halfway unpacked boxes. If he had, Q might have actually lost it and tried to hit him or start crying or anything else stupid. 

Perched on one end, he watched Bond get fresh drinks for them. Catching a glimpse into the cupboard he took the new bottle from showed an entire row of similar ones. Bond's movements were slow and deliberate and he didn't walk completely straight, coming back up to him.  
“Just how drunk are you?”

“Not nearly enough.”  
The agent let himself fall down next to him, still not touching. Still too close. Q took a sip from his glass. It went down easier already. 

For a while, no one said anything, sitting side by side, drinking quietly. After some time, Bond refilled their glasses. Staring down, Q saw he had given him more than two fingers. A lot more. He didn't care. Emptied it. His voice sounded foreign to himself, lazy, dreamlike.  
“What did I do? To make you hate me. I don't understand.”

“You think I hate you?”  
Letting his head fall back on the sofa, Q looked at the man next to him, his handsome face, his beautiful blue eyes, feeling soft and sick and so light he might just float away. He furrowed his brow in confusion, because Bond was smiling at him, warm and affectionate, shaking his head, whispering something that sounded like...  
“...little boy, stupid little boy...”

“...what?”

“They had you on video. They showed me. You. Lying in your own filth. High as a kite. Crying. And talking. You were talking, Q. You were telling them everything. Protocols, names, mission plans, secret projects. God, you wouldn't stop.”

And there it was. The truth. He just had to know. Just couldn't leave it alone, couldn't go back to pretending everything was fine.

“They wanted to sell them. The videos. The information. Probably sell you afterwards too, if there was still anything left of you when they were done. Don't worry. I took care of it. I destroyed it. I destroyed everything. I killed everyone. No one will ever know.”  
Bond skidded closer, eyes wide and unsettlingly manic. Q could feel his hot breath on his face.  
Remembered the old M, talking about mistakes and earning up to them.

“So,” he croaked out, unable to move, to look away from him, like a deer in headlights, like a kitten lifted by its scruff, “you were my judge, jury and executioner.”

Bond blinked at that, leaning back. For a moment, his face seemed to do a million things at once, as if he had forgotten how to arrange his features properly. Then, he smiled, a desperate edge to it.  
“Q, listen to me. Go home. Tomorrow, you go to M. Have me fired. Or not. There are more ways than one to get rid of an agent and with my history and your position, there should be plenty of opportunities.”

He had overlooked something. Something big. 

Something worse.

“Such a mess,” he whispered.

Bond nodded. Lifted his hand as if to touch him. Let it sink back down.  
“I just... I just needed. I didn't think. I shouldn't... It just wasn't right.”

“What wasn't?”

Nothing about this conversation made sense any more.  
“I only had a recording. They got to see you like this. They got to do it to you. When I found you, you were just lying there. Staring into nothing. They broke you. Not right.”

“So you... made it right?”

“The guy I killed in front of your door had the syringes. So I took one. And I injected you. And you were... It didn't take long at all. You came back to life again, so scared, so ready to talk. And when you ran out of information, you started crying and begging me to save you. Apologizing for Silva, for getting captured, for betraying everyone, for not being smarter and better and braver...”

“...stop...”

“You told me about your mum.”

“...oh god...”

Panic bubbled up inside Q, a true, deep horror, squeezing the air out of his chest and running over his skin with sharp claws. He stumbled to his feet, the room spinning wildly, bile in his mouth, the only thought in his mind to GET OUT NOW!

He felt himself being grabbed from behind and then slammed face-first into the wall, an arm pulled like an iron vice around his throat, another one wrapped around him, keeping him pinned. He struggled as hard as he could but he couldn't get any leverage to kick, couldn't free his hands, couldn't reach anything to bite and the grip around his neck was slowly, slowly growing tighter. Dark spots were forming in front of his eyes. His lungs burned. Scotch-flavored breath puffed against his ear, stirring up his hair, the hard line of Bond's body pressed against him. He couldn't scream. He couldn't do anything.

 

 

 

“Sorry.”  
They were on the couch again. Bond had lain him down on his back, with his head in the agent's lap, stroking his wild, dark hair. His glasses were gone. His throat hurt, his head was swimming, there was a disgusting taste in his mouth.  
“Couldn't let you just run out like that. You understand, don't you?”

Slowly, painfully, Q sat up, Bond's hands supporting him until he was vertical again. 

“There you go.”  
He handed him his glasses back and when he slipped them on, Bond seemed almost nervous.  
“I tried to be as careful as possible. Choking someone out, you have to make sure to not apply too much pressure to the front or else you cause damage to the throat. You also can't cut off the airways too quick. The person is out cold faster but it will only take one large gulp of breath to make them regain consciousness. The best way is to do it gradually, depriving the body of oxygen in a way that makes it shut down slower, more like falling asleep.”  
He smiled at that, looking at Q with a strange fondness, almost like pride.  
“You were out for about two minutes.”

“Well, you did a great job,” Q wheezed, “Ten out of ten. Will recommend you.”  
Bizarrely, he actually felt calmer, now. Well, not calmer, really. Hollowed out, maybe, as if someone had scooped out all of his insides.  
And, because he clearly hadn't learned his lesson of not asking questions he didn't want to know the answers to, he continued:  
“Do you want to kill me?”

“Sometimes. Not as often as I used to.”

And god, that hurt. Because that meant that, while Q was nursing his stupid little crush, feeling guilty because he imagined getting a blowjob from his co-worker, Bond had thought about fucking murdering him.

“I would break your neck. Clean. Easy. So quick you wouldn’t even have time to be scared. Just one little move. Crack. And you would finally… You can be so frustrating. So frustrating. I just want to reach out and make you stop twitching and talking and moving away from me. Killing you… would be the easiest way.”

Moving away. From me.  
“Do you want to hurt me?”

Bond sighed. He slowly, slowly put his hand on Q’s shoulder. Q forced himself not to flinch, not to do anything but hold perfectly still. It felt warm and strangely heavy through his jumper.  
“Yes.”

“Do you want to rape me?”

He snatched his hand away from Q as if burned, staring at him with shocked, wide eyes.  
“NO! I’m not… I'm straight,” he ended lamely.

“I am not asking if you want to have sex with me.”

“Jesus, boy…”

“And I am not a boy. I am thirty-one.”

“They are always boys. Always boys. Always so very clever. Always so very vulnerable.”  
Something about the way he said it… wistful. He sounded wistful.

“And these… other boys. What happened to them?”

Bond actually laughed at that, rubbing his hands over his face, shaking his head.  
“Nothing that wouldn’t have happened regardless. I don’t have a bunch of skeletons buried under my parents’ estate, if that is what you are wondering.”

Not a crazed serial killer, then. At least not in the traditional sense. Warily, Q stared after him as Bond stood up and started pacing. From somewhere, he had managed to materialize another glass of scotch.  
“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Stop drinking.”

Bond barked out a laugh.  
“Oh, of course, why didn’t I think of that? I’ll just stop. Drinking.”

“I don’t… I mean just right now, you prick.”  
God, why was it so easy to fall back into their old patterns, as if nothing had happened? As if Q hadn’t just found out… whatever the hell it was he had found out. Maybe Bond thought something similar, because he tilted his head, looking at him as if he was the strangest, most intriguing puzzle he had ever come across.

“All right.”  
He put his glass on the ground, stood back up, opened his arms.  
“What now?”  
He didn’t say it mockingly. He sounded absolutely serious. Like he was ready to do whatever Q asked of him.

“Stay there.”  
Suddenly feeling cold, Q put his feet up on the couch, wrapping his arms around his legs. Stared at the man in front of him, standing there in the middle of the room, waiting for whatever it was Q wanted.  
“Tell me what you did. After you drugged me.”

“I watched.”

“Did you touch me?”

“Your hair.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No.”

“Did you touch yourself?”

“Not during. Later.”

“And… was it good?”

“It was perfect.”

 

 

There was really no place to go from there.  
Two men locked in a stalemate, none of them daring to move, to say something, to break this delicate bubble of stillness. As long as they did nothing, there would be no consequences, no desperate actions, no inevitable breakdown of their lives.  
Something had to give. And it wouldn’t be Bond, Q mused. That guy could probably stand there for hours, silent. Bloody show-off. Q, on the other hand, was already feeling his nervous energy rise again, catching himself drumming restlessly with his fingers on his knees.

Might as well. Might as fucking well.  
“What about right now?”

Bond’s eyebrows shot up almost comically.  
“What?”

“If you could do anything to me right now, what would it be?”

The agent shook his head, his eyes full of pity.  
“No, Q. Don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“I think after pumping me full of poison just because you got off on it you lost any right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do to myself.”

“What do you hope this will accomplish?”

“A way to find deeper understanding and re-establish control, I suppose.”

“You talked to Dr. Russell, then?”

There was a short, heavy pause. Then, simultaneously, they both started laughing. And laughing. And laughing.

“He told you the same shit?”

“He tells everyone the same shit.”

“Oh god, this is so stupid.” Q was wiping away hysterical tears.

When he looked up again, Bond was staring at him with a look of cautious wonder.  
“I can’t believe you are actually here. I imagined it so many times, how I could force you or trick you into coming here. And now, there you are. Almost like a dream.”  
He swallowed before continuing.  
“You are right, of course. I don’t have the right to tell you anything.”

Q nodded, waiting.

“But I want to. I want to tell you what to do.”

An ex-boyfriend of him had a thing for role-play. Not just the acting out of a scene, he wanted to sit down and plan everything in detail. There had been semi-scripts and costumes.  
When Matthew had said: “Let’s pretend I am your master and you are my slave,” it had been ridiculous and a little bit hot and mostly just embarrassing, because Q never truly got the hang of playing out some scenario, of being someone else, of pretending.  
They didn’t break up because of that, but it didn’t help.

This wasn’t pretending. This wasn’t fun. This wasn’t sexy. This was frightening and, because there was clearly something very wrong with him, fascinating. Because now that he actually thought about it… Bond WANTED him.

Q licked his dry lips.  
“What would you tell me to do?”

“To stay.”  
Bond seemed younger all the sudden. Smaller.  
“They all leave. But you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let you.”

It wasn’t that Q hadn’t known about that, about Bond’s rotten luck with women, with people in general. He just hadn’t really considered what kind of psychological damage that might have done, what kind of misfiring in his synapses that might have caused, on top of all the other baggage that comes with being a Double-O Agent.

“Stay where? MI6? Your flat? Your couch?”  
This was stupid. More than that, this was dangerous. Indulging the weird delusions of someone who was a trained assassin. Who had flat out told him he thought about killing him. Who had fucking drugged him and just moments ago choked him until he lost consciousness.

Bond just nodded, looking at him almost pleadingly.  
“I know it's not... It doesn't make sense, really. But my head doesn't care.”

“So what if I said yes?”

“You wouldn't. You would try to get away.”

“And you would stop me.”

Bond hesitated for a moment, before taking a step forwards. Then another. Then another, before falling down on his knees before Q, grabbing his shoulders, fingers digging painfully tight into his flesh.  
“I'd have to. If you walk out of here, someone else would snatch you up. They did it before. I can take care of you. I know you are scared. I know you hate me for what I did to you. But I can protect you. As long as you are here, with me, nothing is going to happen to you.”

“I'd be safe from everyone except you.” 

He gave his shoulders a firm shake, desperation coloring his voice:  
“I told you to get out. I told you to leave. You didn't leave.”

“And now it's too late.”  
Without thinking, without anything going on inside him except a softly humming white noise, Q leaned forward, pressing his lips to Bond's, a dry, fleeting touch, almost not there at all.

Something within Bond's expression shattered, so visceral it nearly made a sound. He pulled Q forwards, wrapping his arms around him, crushing him to his chest, holding on. His entire body was shaking and it took Q a moment to realize Bond was actually whispering words, jumbled and almost too fast to understand, like an avalanche breaking loose, gaining speed, burying trees and houses and people under it, unstoppable, inescapable.  
“...so sorry, so sorry, I am so sorry, I promised, promised to myself that this would never happen, that I would never do something like that, had this thing inside me for almost my entire life, never lost control, was so proud of myself, thought I was stronger than it, smarter than it, no one would ever find out, kept justifying it to myself, kept finding excuses, 'if I had taken longer, they would have injected him anyway, won't give him the entire syringe, just half, he won't remember, everything will be fine, get him to a doctor right after', you were so beautiful, you were so, so beautiful, can't stop thinking about it, please help me, please, can't live like this, can't BE like this...”

That night, Q learned everything about the other boys. About everything James Bond had done and hadn't done. About everything he had thought about doing.  
He heard about Vesper, pretty, lovely, sharp Vesper, dying in agony right in front of James' eyes and there had been nothing he could do, her fragile ribs breaking under pressure as he tried to resuscitate her. He heard about the old M, about how it felt when this seemingly gigantic, unshakable woman suddenly became a small, delicate, cold weight in James' arms, despite everything he had done, trying to save her. He heard about so many more, had cruel, dark stories murmured in his ear, childhood secrets and brutal encounters and an endless parade of death and pain and torture and helplessness. 

That night, Q let James tie up his hands in front of him, the rope slowly and carefully pulled tight. And Q sat there and let James hold his bound hands in his, let him stroke his fingers over the places where fabric met skin with quiet reverence. 

That night, something started to heal, maybe in a way that was crooked and unnatural, a bone that will have to be re-broken eventually.

But for now, it was enough.


End file.
